After a decade of favoring hedge fund behemoths — funds with $5 billion in assets and larger — deep-pocketed investors in growing numbers appear ready to put their cash to work with smaller firms, some with assets of less than $1 billion, a recent report has found.

The seismic investment change comes as US stock markets continue to muddle along and some large hedge fund players blow up.

“The pendulum appears to be swinging toward smaller managers,” Barclays Capital said in a recent report obtained by The Post.

A whopping 79 percent of investors in the study plan to up their allocations to smaller hedge funds, or those with less than $1 billion in assets, next year, according to the 30-page report based on a survey and interviews with 165 investors representing $4 trillion in assets, including $500 billion in hedge-fund assets.

By contrast, a mere 26 percent of those surveyed said they plan to increase the amount they will give to big funds, or those with more than $5 billion in assets.

What’s more, 16 percent said they plan to decrease their allocations to big hedge funds next year, compared to just 2 percent who said the same for small funds.

“Things have changed, and I think investors are now realizing they’ve got to change with it,” said Ferenc Sanderson, an executive with Cranwood Capital Management, who has been predicting the trend toward smaller funds in the wake of the financial crisis.

“The advantage that size had in 2000 — cheaper capital and access to big deals — none of that matters today,” Sanderson said.

Steven Nadel, a lawyer who represents hedge funds, said investors also increasingly are drawn to the “bargaining power” they can get with small firms, such a lower fees or increased liquidity.

Already this year, 18 percent of new money to hedge funds went to the smaller funds, up from 9 percent in 2010, Barclays said. In all, a total 40 percent of all inflows were sent to funds with under $5 billion in 2011, compared to just 20 percent in 2010.

The trend toward the smaller players has been inching forward since the financial crisis as funds once thought to be invincible suffer headline-making blows.

Recently, former $7 billion behemoth FrontPoint Partners was forced to shutter after one of its traders was indicted for insider trading, while former highflying billionaire John Paulson, who soared to hedge-fund fame betting against toxic mortgages in 2008, has been tarred by devastating losses of more than 50 percent in one of his flagship funds.